


thanatos

by sophthebi



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Apocalypse
Genre: Blood and Gore, Creepy, Death, F/M, Immobilisation kink, Other, Rape/Non-con Elements, Smut, Snow White!Au, cosmic horror kinda, dark!millory, fairytale!au, this is dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 16:53:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20177602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophthebi/pseuds/sophthebi
Summary: “There’s something in these forests.”“Something … something venomous. It’s been killing me since I arrived here. It is what drains me of life, what keeps me bed ridden.”“But I cannot leave. I protect the people. Now I pass this onto you, this destiny is yours now Mallory.”She fell, fell deep into the grave, body unmoving. At first, she suspected it was sleep. But it wasn’t. No.Her eyes blinking again, vision clear. She could see, hear, smell … but not touch. Couldn’t move a finger, couldn’t wriggle her toes, couldn’t open her mouth to gasp when time passed.He met her gaze, and his eyes widened. Only just discovering an intimacy. He smiled some more. This time, it reached his eyes, although they wept with tears, copying her own.





	thanatos

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iridescentrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iridescentrey/gifts).

> well, this was actually strangely fun and interesting to write!   
I'd like say a huge thank to iridescentrey! I hope you like this dark ass fic! XD

She’d visit the grave often. 

It had somehow moulded itself into her routine day by day. Wake early, just as the sun rose, travel the nearby village and visit patients, trade and talk, pick herbs and flowers, then, only then, after she had completed her chores, would she visit the clearing. The one where the roses were planted early spring. The ones planted by … by Cordelia. 

Mallory thought it was befitting to lay Cordelia by them, beneath them. They were her roses. It was her clearing. The one she gifted knowledge to. The one she left for Mallory. 

Afternoon sun, shaded by forest tree canopies, Mallory would rest there, until the faintest glow of stars traced the sky. 

The ache always needed mending. The chasm in her chest always desired warmth, some remnant of that flame within her passed on mentor. The roses were the closest she could get to Cordelia. To her scent. To her touch. To her voice and presence.

She wished she could sleep by the red flowers, lay there until her eyes couldn’t keep from shutting, and the sky dimmed to a darkness only star and moonlight could fight back. 

“There’s something in these forests.”

Fingers buried themselves in virgin soil. Cold. 

“Something … something venomous. It’s been killing me since I arrived here. It is what drains me of life, what keeps me bed ridden.” 

Lips quivering. Tears pricking at the edges of lower lids. 

“But I cannot leave. I protect the people. Now I pass this onto you, this destiny is yours now Mallory.” 

Salted tears dribbled along her flustered cheeks. Red with cold, nose sniffling and eyes stinging. She stared up at the colourless evening, hoping the aching would stop. Feeling the venom corrupting what was supposed to be Cordelia’s sanctuary and peace.

“It will come for you too… But you will be stronger, stronger than me. You will fight it until your body gives way, until you are unable to crawl.” 

Mallory nodded. Made promises. Promises that she now doesn’t know if she can keep. She was nothing. Nothing without Cordelia. The villagers knew it, everyone knew it. Perhaps Cordelia knew it too, but was too taken with letting go to admit. 

They felt pity, but not hope for their new protector. To keep them untouched by the creature in the forests. The shadow that haunted dreams and walked side by side with the dead inflicted by violence and unnatural sickness. The being that took and took from the living. An abomination, a corruption of Thanatos. Twisted death, unwelcome and disturbed.

The devil itself, some said.

“I saw it! It had the head of a goat and the tongue of a snake! Ugly and smelling of dead flowers! It wanders at night, on its hind legs, as tall as the trees. It eats my cattle, leaves gore and bones in the aftermath!”

“It spoke in dark chants, seducing me to cut deep, to cleanse my sins. To open my wrists and bleed them out. He puts bugs in my head if I ignore him. I feel them, even now as we speak. Scratching and screeching. Centipedes crawl from ears if I don’t do what he says for long.”

“My boy cannot sleep at night. Wakes in fits and with fever. Sometimes cannot even move a finger, frozen still in his bed, moaning, trying to scream for me.” 

The villagers suffered, and Mallory was hopeless to help, to save them. She brewed teas and made amulets, chanted incantations by sleeping children who could never sleep without fear of the forest creature, she cried with them when they screamed, their eyes bloodied with crimson tears. She did everything Cordelia taught her to ward off dark entities, but nothing could fight the creature. For a time, she contemplated whether there was an easier explanation, an epidemic, a sickness that could be treated by doctors, by things palpable. Practical, more humble medicines, science, not superstition. 

Until she saw it herself. 

A woman die right before her, a rotten apple taking the place of the fetus inside her pregnant belly. The midwife fainted and Mallory was left with a bloodied corpse, a ripped open stomach and a fruit covered in worms and the realisation that it wasn’t science, neither superstition. But something real. Something beyond her control, beyond anyone’s control.

After that day, Mallory didn’t sleep. Only inconsistent dozing off was her source of rest. 

Even then, nightmares haunted her. 

Each rest; a different terror, almost a wicked lesson every dream. Playing with her mind, seeing what wickedness she had within herself. It offered riches for the price of a child’s soul. It offered human flesh in disguise of sweets and candy. It offered power, it offered unending admiration from the villagers at the expense of kindness and compassion, her only comfort. She rejected all of it. She turned her back on all its attempts at destroying her. And the nightmares only worsened because of her strange pride. 

The creature in the forest was testing her resolve, as if she had any left. As if she had any to start with. 

All courage left her when Cordelia’s hand in hers went stiff and cold. When her chest didn’t rise, when her eyes didn’t blink in the morning and the sunlight couldn’t bring colour into her skin. When Mallory closed her eyes to a living Cordelia one last time.

It left with the only person she had. The only thing closest to being a mother to her.

“I’m sorry Cordelia,” Mallory whispered, emptying her satchel and wicker basket onto the ground beneath her. Flower petals scattered in the long grass, some flew with the breeze, some stuck to her skirts and hair. They smelt too much of spring and life and Cordelia. Something that had grown absent since her passing. Something Mallory was slowing beginning to resent for abandoning the village. For abandoning her.

“Never stay outside at dark. Whoever leaves the safety of stone and wood at dark … they never return.”

The warnings. They remained in her head, alongside fear and dread. But Mallory was too tired to listen. She lay on her back in the long grass, beside Cordelia’s grave. 

She didn’t know if she was condemning herself to death or not, nor if she should have brought a shovel to dig her own grave. Regardless of it all, she lay still in the grass and stare at the night. Gazed the stars that blurred in her teary vision and awaited the goat head and snake tongue. 

Yet…nothing came. 

Only silence. 

And that was a worse fate than that of the forest creature taking her soul. 

So, she clawed at the soil. Not blinking, not a tear. She clawed and dug into the ground with her bare hands, and by morning she had created a new grave. Her grave. And when she finally gathered the courage to lay in it, an apple fell from a tree canopy above her.

The creature taunting her. Like the flesh disguised as sweets and candies, like the fetus in the dead woman’s stomach, like the forbidden fruit stolen by Eve. Mallory couldn’t fight it, couldn’t fight whatever it was, so instead found comfort in giving it its satisfaction, seeing her giving in to her darkness. Into sorrow and despair. 

She took the shining fruit into her palms, cradled it and smoothed the pads of her fingers around its skin, red and glowing. Brought it to her mouth with closed lids, moaning with sobs as she sunk her teeth into its crisp flesh, seething in its sweet tasting blood. 

And when her eyes opened, the fruit was rotting and her heart stammering. The tears slowed, as did her sobs, and a small relief overcame her. Like the seconds before sleep takes you. No pain. No thinking. Just animalistic desire to rest. 

She fell, fell deep into the grave, body unmoving. At first, she suspected it was sleep. But it wasn’t. No.

Her eyes blinking again, vision clear. She could see, hear, smell … but not touch. Couldn’t move a finger, couldn’t wriggle her toes, couldn’t open her mouth to gasp when time passed. When days went by. 

When it rained atop her paralysed body. 

When the bugs crawled over her, but never in her. 

Her body forever unchanging. Stuck in immortal flesh, unable to sleep, unable to wake up. Unable to die.

The villagers discovered her, but she couldn’t scream for help. They cried, mourned for her. 

“The creature got her, or perhaps it was her sadness.”

They pulled her from the grave, undressed her in their village, washed her naked body, redressed her in their funerary customs. A beige gown, silk and flowing. Brushed her hair till the knots disappeared. Placed a flower crown on her head. Painted the juice of wild berries over her thin lips and cheeks. 

They carried her back to the clearing, only difference now was a coffin. No … not a coffin.

It lay above ground, a stone slab. 

It was cold on her flesh, the dress too thin and allowing the winter air to seep through into her bones.

They prayed for her, threw rose petals atop her body, smelling of spring and Cordelia. Adjusted her hands so they lay crossed over on her stomach, a rose stem laced into her fingers. 

She screamed, screamed till her mind couldn’t bear to hear it. Yet they didn’t hear a thing, the villagers deaf and blind to her pain. 

And then they left her in the clearing.

It snowed heavily the next few days of her “burial”. And somehow, she forgot what it felt like to be cold just as she forgot what it felt like to be warm.

If the weather couldn’t break her entirely, the loneliness would. Yet she wasn’t fated to be alone forever. Not when the shadows of night came. Not when it came to her. The creature of the forest. 

It’s tall shadow stroke fear into her dead heart. She expected its talons to rip her apart, eat her whole, bit by bit.

But when it walked into the moonlight that hovered over her like a chandelier … she felt cold and warmth again. She felt life and death again. She felt fear and relief again. She felt spring and winter again. 

Its eyes bluer than paint. Its hair lighter than gold. Its skin smoother than the most ripened apple. Naked and hairless in body. Lithe and strong. Fingers graceful and soft. Lips full and the colour of roses.

He was beautiful.

And she cried.

He smiled down at her, a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. As if he had seen someone else smile and decided to replicate it. His eyes empty of humanity, not because he had none, but because he didn’t understand it. What was a human to him but an insect to experiment his power and intelligence over? A creature so horrifyingly innocent. 

Her own brown eyes followed him. Followed every tilt of his head, every strange and unbalanced blink. Not once did his chest rise or fall. Not once did a breath of air escape from his lips. He moved awkwardly, as if he wasn’t attuned to the human body. 

He met her gaze, and his eyes widened. Only just discovering an intimacy. He smiled some more. This time, it reached his eyes, although they wept with tears, copying her own. 

Her own innocence churned. His naked form causing warmth to overwhelm, she wanted to close her eyes and recollect but she couldn’t. He caught on, just then noticing her attempts at moaning in pain, just then only understanding what pain was. 

He touched a hand to her forehead and she could finally blink, finally gasp. But still, she lay paralysed.

Only her mouth and eyes given back to her.

“Please. Let me go. Please.” She couldn’t keep the words from falling out. He listened. His lips opened, as if to speak, and hope rose within her.

But then sound came from those opened lips. 

“Please. Let me go. Please,” he repeated back to her, failing attempts at replicating her tone and shaking voice. Instead, his voice coming out like a young boy, complaining to his mother about wanting to go outside to play with his friends.

Mallory screamed. 

He screamed.

She sobbed.

He sobbed.

She remained quiet.

He didn’t make a sound.

She watched him.

He watched her.

She believed nothing could be worse.

Until he became enamoured with the dress, her chestnut hair and the flowers in it. His fingers scrunched the gown’s material into his palm, he moaned in appreciation of its softness. He did the same with her hair.

Then her rising chest caught his eyes. Then the shape of her breasts. His palm smoothing over the curves, she whimpered. He clawed his fingers into the dress and pulled, ripped it from her body. She yelled.

He didn’t yell back. Focused on her naked form. He palmed her breasts, down to her navel, then further to her hips and groin. His hand slid down, fingers tracing into the slit. She gasped, he looked back up, lips parted and pupils dilated. He continued to press his fingers into her slit. 

The other hand came to her neck, held it gently, thumb drawing circles on her throat. “S-soft.”

He reached his thumb higher, and played with her lips. Rubbing away the berries stain and bringing it to his own mouth, tasting it. Mallory whimpered. He grew curious, and did it again. 

He liked her whimpers. Decided to taste her instead of the berries on her lips. 

His face was soft against her thighs, his lips not one bit chapped as they rolled up and down her slit. His tongue wet and nothing like a snake’s tongue. Human and thick. He pushed it into her and she whimpered louder. Clenched her eyes shut to pretend the first time she was being touched by another human like this wasn’t happening the way it was happening.

He brought a hand to his hardness and flinched, gasped, keeled over. He grasped her thighs with his wide hands and slid her closer to him, her legs hanging limply over the edge of the stone. 

She kept her eyes shut but felt him watching her, even as he pushed himself in and hummed in satisfaction. All she could see was a rotten fruit as he pumped himself in and out, a beating heart inside her. He thrusted harder and harder, not understanding the pain and tightness. 

Yet she couldn’t stop herself from heaving with him. The pain pleasurable in a twisted way. He pulsed, his thrusts became chaotic in its rhythm, he came inside her, wet and warm.

He licked from her navel to her chin, licked and kissed and moaned into the crook of her neck. 

“O-open, your, your eyes.”

She did. His voice was kind and gentle. She couldn’t help but obey.

He smiled down at her. “You-you a-are mine…”

His lips met hers.

Her fingers clenched into fists. Her toes wriggled. She screamed into the emptiness of the clearing as she fell from the stone slab, to find herself alone and cold in the clearing of roses.


End file.
